Rob Oller's Second Thoughts: Will Aaron Rodgers succeed or bomb out like Joe Namath?

As Aaron Rodgers heads to the Big Apple, it will be interesting to watch whether the 39-year-old quarterback pulls a Tom Brady or Joe Namath.

If the former, good for Jets fans, who through saliva testing have been linked ancestrally to Cleveland Browns fans. If the latter, well, bad for all of us.

I am weather-beaten enough to remember how another Broadway quarterback ended his career in 1977. Joe Namath spent 12 seasons with the Jets before heading west to Los Angeles, where the 34-year-old with two bum knees resumed his career with the Rams.

Seeing Namath wearing yellow and blue was jarring enough, but watching him struggle added to the misery. Super Joe was not just a New York institution but at one time the super cool face of the NFL.

In four games before being benched for good in favor of Pat Haden, Namath completed just 50 of 107 passes, threw three touchdowns and five interceptions. In the final game of his career, he took a beating in Chicago, knocked out of the game in the fourth quarter after completing 16 of 40 passes with four interceptions.

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Sadly, we had seen this before. Four years before Namath’s failed final season, Baltimore traded quarterback Johnny Unitas to San Diego. In his first game with the Chargers after 17 seasons in Baltimore, the 40-year-old Colts legend completed 6 of 17 passes with three interceptions and was sacked eight times. He was benched three games later and threw only one more pass during the 1973 season before retiring.

It’s hard to picture Rodgers falling that far, but I still hate seeing players so fully associated with one city switch teams. It happened with Joe Montana, who after 13 seasons in San Francisco was traded at age 37 to Kansas City, where he had some success. It happened with Brett Favre, who after 16 seasons in Green Bay briefly retired at age 39 only to file for reinstatement and get traded to the Jets before retiring for good with Minnesota.

Brady’s exit from New England to Tampa Bay somehow felt less pathetic, probably because he won a Super Bowl in his first season with the Buccaneers. Yet his retirement-unretirement, followed by a relative stinker of a final season in 2022 leaves a less-than-sentimental taste in my mouth.

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I have no dog in the hunt with Rodgers, but donning green and white after wearing green and yellow for 18 seasons wounds the romantic in me.

Learning a lesson behind home plate?

Unruly parents and players berating umpires is nothing new, and unfortunately neither is assaulting them, but one Little League organization in southern New Jersey is turning a negative into a learning experience.

A new rule in the Deptford Township Little League requires spectators who seem to think they could do a better job than the volunteer umpires to come out and prove it.

USA Today reports that anyone in the stands who confronts an ump during a game will be put to the test by having to umpire three games before being allowed back as a spectator.

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Bravo.

“The main purpose is not for (parents) to be able to call a baseball game, but for them to see what’s going on out here, and it’s not that easy,” league president Don Bozzuffi told Philadelphia TV station WPVI.

English Premier League players pay to play (better)

Scoreboard: Soccer fans $120, Tottenham players -$120

Now this is what I call putting your money where your humiliation is. The first-team squad from Tottenham Hotspur will refund fans who traveled to watch Sunday’s embarrassing 6-1 loss at Newcastle United.

Goalkeeper Hugo Lloris apologized to the estimated 3,000 fans who made the 240-mile trip to watch the mess, and the team released a statement saying players would cover the ticket cost, which averaged about $120.

Your turn, CBJ.

Listen in:

“I was the #76 prospect in the Midwest in HS and switched from LB to DB. I was 7th on the depth chart at Michigan. I wanted to transfer. 3 years later? A degree, nat’l title with All American honors. Thank God there wasn’t a transfer portal to bail me out. I wouldn’t be where I am today #ThoseWhoStay – Twitter post by Eastmoor and Michigan graduate Marcus Ray.

Off-topic

File this under “things that make you go hmmm.” A friend’s 6½-year-old son recently lost one of his top front teeth, which got me wondering whether there is another physical “sign” that pinpoints age so exactly? You see a child with a missing front top tooth and −bam! − you know how old he or she is within about a six-month window. Dentists, doctors, biologists and carnival age/weight/birth-date guessers, please chime in.

roller@dispatch.com

@rollerCD

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Aaron Rodgers risks becoming like old NFL quarterbacks before him